Kristoffer Øigjord is an award-winning photographer and film director with a fearless eye and a taste for the cinematic. At just 17, only two months after picking up his first camera, he claimed three prizes in the national photo competition Focus Norway. A year later, he left media school behind to chase his vision, shooting for the fashion house Galia Lahav in Los Angeles by 19. At 22, he directed a music video for Grammy-winner Wyclef Jean, just a year after co-founding Snotrava with his brother Steffen, a creative studio that grew into a global community of filmmakers and artists. Kristoffer crafts images and stories that pulse with beauty, truth, and the electricity of moments caught between reality and dream.

My father says he noticed my creative spark when I was just two years old, sitting on the floor building Lego. While other kids built models to play with, I was fascinated by the act of creating itself. I’d study my finished pieces for a while, then take them apart and move on to the next project. As I grew older, I graduated from Lego to building treehouses, doghouses, downhill carts, sheds, and terraces with my grandfather, Kjell—an incredibly precise craftsman who taught me the beauty of patience, detail, and working with my hands.

When I was ten, I became obsessed with Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, and threw myself into martial arts. Determined to be like them, I started filming myself practicing martial arts in our garage on my iPod. That’s how I discovered my passion for visual storytelling. Gradually, I realized I felt even more alive behind the camera than in front of it.

By the age of fifteen, I knew I wanted to work in film. I dreamed of directing martial arts movies, so it felt only natural to enroll in media and communication studies at sixteen. Until then, my focus had been purely on filmmaking—but I was fortunate to have an amazing photography teacher, Dag Magne Søyland, who encouraged me to try photography and enter the national photo contest, Fokus Norge.

I bought my first DSLR and spent two months shooting photos every day, barely putting my camera down. When the contest results first came back, I was told I hadn’t won anything. I was crushed and complained to my teacher that there must have been a mistake. Cocky, in hindsight—but maybe not entirely wrong. Two weeks later, while I was on a shoot, I got a call saying I’d won not one, but three awards: one first prize and two honorable mentions, plus a cash prize of 10,000 NOK—which I immediately invested in new camera equipment.

That moment gave me the confidence to make what was, at the time, an extremely controversial decision: I quit school to pursue my vision of working in film and photography full-time. My parents and almost everyone around me were against it—except my photography teacher, who understood, having dropped out himself to become one of Norway’s top photographers.

My decision was rooted in two things: an understanding of myself, and a quote from Bruce Lee. I’d learned that when I’m passionate about something, I go all in—sometimes obsessively. It showed in my grades: I failed the subjects I didn’t care about, while excelling in film and photography. Bruce Lee’s words became my mantra: “One must get in the water to learn to swim.”

So I dove in. And yes, there were moments I nearly drowned. But learning the hard way was also the fastest way to grow.

Freed from school, I poured all my time into film and photography projects around Stavanger, saving up money to chase my dream in Los Angeles. I fell in love with shooting music videos and fashion photography—two genres that gave me freedom to experiment and express my artistic vision. I’m also a huge music lover , Spotify ranked me in the top 0.001% of listeners worldwide in 2024.

I’m still driven by the same restless curiosity that made me take apart my Lego creations as a kid. Whether I’m behind a camera filming a story, capturing a fleeting expression in a photo, or exploring new creative collaborations, my goal is always the same: to create images and films that move people, challenge perspectives, and leave a lasting impression.